from the studio to the operating room

Creative Drought

The last 6 months have been a particular low point in my creativity. Before this, I would draw every day and find inspiration in the mundane, the ordinary, the every day.. I can think of a few factors that have contributed to this:

#1. I started my Masters in Bioethics and began delving into 150-200 pages of dense philosophical theory every other week. As someone who took a philosophy class in high school and that was the extent of my social sciences scholarship, it took all the energy I had to get through merely 1/4 of the program. It has helped my critical thinking (albeit making me come off as a bit of a bitch at times) but has demanded little creativity.

#2. Insecurity. Following the AMI conference in July, I felt so excited about this growing field and the abundance of opportunities for collaboration. I tried to mimic what I saw there, delving into digital painting and was immediately disappointed. I was disappointed with the medium itself. It felt oddly cold and lacked the tactile sensation of pencil and paper. It was also frustrating how I could envision something in my head and it would never turn out that way. Insecurity in my own artistic abilities started slowly seeping in.

#3. For various reasons, I was around the artistic people in my life a lot less.

#4. My daughter stopped napping in the afternoon on weekends. Probably the most creative times were those 2-3 hours to work on a project. It was just enough to do something meaningful but short enough to give it some urgency.

It is probably a very normal thing to experience ebbs and flows in one’s creativity. I just can’t seem to get back to that time when I took so much joy from drawing.